Whale Tale....

Miss'd a shot of a lifetime on the run home yesterday, had my camera stowed away at the moment of near-collision with a humpback , but did think to capture the the great Leviathan as recorded on the sounder... you can see the whale directly under the boat at the top right, to the left of the "<-1/1" is a solid blue vertical line denoting interupted transmission of 3,000 pulse watts from the transducer at 50 kilohertz... (that's a lot) - blocked by the massive size - - - Okay, the event began by the sightings of hundreds of whales along the Baranof Island coast, at any time you could see breeching or feeding, cavorting & spy-hopping... so the wheelwatch was attentive as a calf crossed the bow a little too close... immediately a giant relative sped into the path of the oncomming collision.. rarely but sometimes (and this was one), I took evasive action to slow the boat... the large whale frantically started to "flag" me by waving it's 20-some foot wide tail 20-some feet above the water's surface.... knowing impact was imminent I actually thrust the engine RPM's into reverse gear... stopping mere inches from this giant gyrating tail, which was well gnawed and gashed from some other encounter... finally slipping once more below the ocean surface, froth, bubbles and powerful eddies left in my gaze.... for a moment I stood & collected reality... rockin in my world.